Trading for the last week of the August swing market and for September bidweek got off to quiet starts Monday. Mild bullishness reigned in next-day numbers at most points, with quotes ranging from flat to just over a nickel higher. Tiny dips were recorded at a few western points.

The market has little more than normal seasonal weather support going for it currently. The South, Midcontinent/Central Plains and interior West are about as hot as one could expect for late August; otherwise high temperatures are ranging from mild to moderately warm.

Cash certainly couldn’t be accused of “following the screen” Monday, since the September futures contract dove nearly 20 cents. But sources said it’s a safe bet that physical gas will also be heading in that direction Tuesday.

A marketer quoting Michigan citygates in the high $5.40s said the Midwest was “a little hot and humid” early this week following a pleasant weekend, but should be back to highs in the 70s by the weekend.

Noting that Florida Gas Transmission had an Overage Alert Day notice in place Monday with a relatively tight tolerance of 10% (see Transportation Notes), a Florida utility buyer said that spurred a fair amount of intraday business throughout the $5.20s in all of the pipeline’s production area zones. The intraday numbers ranged slightly to both sides of next-day pricing, she said, and whether they were cheaper or more just depended on deal timing.

Gas load for power generation is being dampened by high nuclear plant utilization. According to NGI‘s running tally of nuke operations reported by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (https://intelligencepress.com/subscribers/power/nrc/), only the Davis-Besse and Cook 2 facilities were at zero output Monday. All other plants were at 100% or close to it.

The remnants of Tropical Depression Nine, which was downgraded to a tropical wave late Friday afternoon, had reached the western Caribbean Sea, The Weather Channel reported. Although looking “less impressive” than last week, it was still heading toward the Gulf of Mexico where conditions are more favorable for development. A second tropical wave moved was bring windy rain to the Lesser Antilles island chain Monday morning. Two other waves are still far out in the Atlantic.

Citigroup analyst Kyle Cooper said his final estimation for this week’s storage report looks for a build of 66-76 Bcf, which compares to year-ago and five-year average volumes of 59 Bcf and 58 Bcf respectively. “A build of 73 Bcf would exceed the five-year average by 25%,” Cooper continued.. “YTD [year-to-date] injections, despite the cold early April, now exceed the five-year average by 128%. We certainly expect this trend to continue and based on the outlook for the Labor Day weekend, there is at least a small chance that the report released on Sept. 11 will see a build of 100 Bcf or greater. The weather would obviously have to be quite mild, but that is forecast as a possibility.”

A market-area source reported hearing a lot of talk about index-flat pricing on Florida Gas Transmission for September, “but that’s all it is at this point, just talk. We just started to get our ducks in a row for bidweek today [Monday].”

The Calgary area has cooled off quite a bit since the unusual occurrence of hitting highs in the 90s last week, a producer said. Intra-Alberta basis has widened since last week but was tightening back a little Monday, he went on, reporting that Aeco was trading in the vicinity of C$5.93 that afternoon. That was the equivalent of about minus 59 cents in basis, he said.

©Copyright 2003 Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.